12 Years A Surv;vor

February 18, 2026, I held a private, sacred ceremony at 3:15am sitting at my dining room table. A ceremony dedicated to celebration. A moment to pause and look back at just how far I have come.

February 18, 2014, I was raped. In the bedroom of my childhood home. I was 17. It changed my life forever.

I buried this trauma within me for years. It wasn’t until I started therapy while in college that everything came to the surface. Flashbacks. Hypervigilance. Night terrors. Debilitating phantom pains. I was psychologically reliving the rape all over again.

My escape was alcohol —disguised as college partying. I always had vodka in my dorm room, hidden in bins and folded into clothes in my closet. Alcohol made me forget. It provided me a temporary numbing for my pain. It was my cure for PTSD. Sometimes I would flirt with death and take sleeping pills after a night of binge drinking. Almost like a game I played with God to see if He would finally take me away…but He never did. Because He knew I had a greater purpose. He valued my life even when I didn’t.

Years of therapy forced me to look in the mirror and face my fears. I learned about all the weight I was carrying. Weight that wasn’t even mine to worry about. As I peeled back the layers of my trauma, I discovered healing. I discovered a whole new perspective on life — one filled with opportunity.

Life has been a whirlwind since that fateful day back in 2014.

But what a blessing it is that I chose to live it anyway.

In an ironic twist, I fell in love with Life in a way I never could with dying.

12 years a survivor. Forever to go.

New poem on the Poems page.